My colleague and friend Brian Taylor, who has died aged 66 after suffering an aneurysm, was a lecturer in sociology at the School of Cultural and Community Studies (CCS) at the University of Sussex. He was a genuine polymath at a university characterised by interdisciplinary teaching and research.
His teaching career began with a year at Queen’s University, Belfast, before his move to Sussex in 1977. There he initially focused on aspects of deviance and religion but his main interest was literature, especially Ulster novelists of the early 20th century.
He wrote the definitive biography of the Irish author Forrest Reid, biographies of the late 19th-century nature writer Richard Jefferies and of James Owen Hannay (who wrote under the pen name George A Birmingham), and co-edited, with Paul Goldman, another volume on Forrest Reid.
Born in Aberdeen into a Salvation Army family, Brian was the son of Ronald, a bus conductor, and Margaret (nee Guyan). When Brian was 11 the family moved to Bracknell, Berkshire, and he attended Forest grammar school, Winnersh. He studied sociology at the University of London and at postgraduate level at the University of Essex, and in 1976 obtained a DPhil from the University of Aberdeen, where he focused on the subject of religious conversion.
At CCS Brian contributed to the fields of art, literature and society and helped develop the first Sussex degree course in media studies. He was on the editorial board of the journal Theory, Culture & Society and was joint reviews editor of Sociology in the 1990s.
Brian’s teaching was inspiring, his lectures packed and delivered with erudition and humour. Utterly dependable, and a reflective and critical thinker, he was also valued for the support he gave his colleagues at times of stress.
Private, enigmatic, vulnerable, conservative in dress and demeanour, Brian nevertheless held firm views, for example, in his criticism of British compromises with the IRA in Northern Ireland.
After Brian left Sussex in 2001 he retired to Prades, in southern France, with his partner of 40 years, Brian Barfield, who survives him, as does his sister, Pat.
The two Brians met when Brian Barfield, a radio features editor who was planning a programme to mark the centenary of Forrest Reid, received a letter from Brian Taylor, as the writer’s biographer, who was subsequently invited to present the programme on Radio Ulster and Radio 3.
Leaving academia behind, together they shared passions for reading, for music from Bach to Boulez, and opera in particular, and for offering guests good cuisine, hospitality and the Taylor views on political events in France and Britain, always rounded off with a cheery “Pip! Pip!”